My outstanding childhood memory was visiting my grandparents. Come rain or shine, whenever or wherever we ate, my grandpa would always have fruit trifle. A hundred years ago that might have just contained apples, oranges and strawberries and grapes and only been possible in the summer. Now, thanks to the interconnected world of fruit-based ingredient suppliers, we are eating avocado for breakfast, whipping up a banana, kiwi and passionfruit smoothie for lunch and knocking back a lychee martini instead of dinner.

Our diets today are full of exotic, succulent and far-flung fruits (and all the better for it), which all have seasonal and geographical limitations. Established fruit-based ingredient suppliers have fostered strong international networks to ensure fruit and fruit juices are brought right to our tables. Fruit and fruit juice is contained in many of the foodstuffs we eat and drink, but often not in the obvious whole format we can easily recognise.

Our products are used in:

  • Baked goods
  • Ice cream (particularly the growth premium market)
  • Condiments
  • Preserves and jam
  • Fruit smoothies
  • Fruit-based alcoholic drinks such as cider
  • Cooking sauces
  • Ready meals
  • Desserts
  • Yoghurts
  • Some fruit-based ingredient suppliers are also venturing into 'vegetable specialities' for pickles etc.

The fruits have to get from tree to the consumer in the quickest, cheapest and tastiest way possible. To enable this, fruit ingredient suppliers have developed different methods of production in order to maximise flavour and shelf-life.

With SME's trying to differentiate themselves from the big grocery players by offering new products and premium quality products, we find that fruit and fruit juice ingredient suppliers are having to offer a wide range of formats in order to satisfy market demands. “Not from concentrate,” (NFC) is a label you now see often in the supermarket shelves, which attaches an acceptable extra value to the product. Other methods used to deliver the fruit and fruit juice ingredients include:

  • Concentrate (with or without seeds for berries)
  • Fruit pulps
  • IQF (individually quick frozen) fruit (most often berries)
  • Puree
  • Puree concentrate
  • Comminute (for citrus fruits)
  • Infusion
  • Essential oils
  • Blended juices
  • Unique blends

Many of the juice formats can be graded:

  • De-ionised - removal of natural acids, flavours and colour to leave only the sugars, used as a natural sweetener.
  • Clarified - processed to remove particles which create a cloudy appearance.
  • Cloudy

Finally, fruit-based ingredient suppliers have to offer scalable solutions to ensure usage by as wide a variety of businesses. Fruit and fruit juices can be supplied in diverse packages, some even offering bespoke bottling of as small as shot-sized bottles.

Another dramatic improvement is our ability to package these fruits and juices aseptically (free from bacteria), which has offered drastically improved shelf life - from 3 to approx. 21 days.

If you want to get in touch with our team here at David Berryman please call us on 01582 873636. You can also visit our website to find out more about our services and products we can offer you. http://www.davidberryman.co.uk/

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